


The Device of Our Conviction

by Mertiya



Series: RvB Prompt Wars [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Season/Series 13, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, RvB Angst War, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epsilon fragments in Tucker's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Collide, Disintegration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saltsanford](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/gifts), [awhirlingwind](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=awhirlingwind).



The suit activates.  Epsilon fragments.  Tucker can feel him, feel the components that were Delta and Theta and Omega and the others swimming bright through the corridors of his skull and into him, and he feels–powerful.  Vulnerable.  As if his mind is open to the universe and it’s a song playing at full volume in every corner.  Does that make sense?  He’s not sure.

The armor enhancements take nothing but thought to activate, and he’s fighting in a way he never has before, a way he’d never even imagined fighting.  This must be how Carolina feels, how Wash feels, this elegance of movement, all of his limbs doing exactly what he wants.  He thinks, and his body responds.  And he can think of impossible things, too–he vanishes and reappears, blade out and bisecting one of Hargrove’s people.  

As they raise their guns to fire and turn all the Reds and Blues into a fine red mist, Tucker actually finds himself laughing, because all he has to do is think of a shield and one appears, translucent but impervious.  Bullets ricochet with a hugely loud noise, and it’s like a drumming, drumming drumbeat, front row seats to the outdoor concert of the year and just as packed with yelling, screaming bodies.

“Dude, is he–laughing?” Grif’s voice, but the words don’t mean much.  All that matters is this bloody dance, movement from one soldier to the next, thrumming sword in hand.

“I think he’s making sword noises again.” 

The especially loud crack of a shot, and Caboose goes down without a sound, a jagged hole in the front of his helmet.  There’s blood and something grey on the deck around him.  Time freezes–and then it really does freeze and rolls back as the time distortion unit activates at another thought.  

That’s the first sensation of discomfort, nausea roiling unpleasantly in his gut, but it’s worth it to pull Caboose down in time to avoid the bullet, before he decapitates the motherfucker who tried to snipe the guy from his team.

Time’s speeding up again, and the dance is getting harder to maintain, but there are fewer enemies too.  It’s no longer effortless, but the effort isn’t effort so much as it is an increase in temperature, a jagged strangeness cracking down his back and up his spine and for the first time he wonders what’s happening to his head?  Is this what it was like for the Meta?  And who was the Meta before he was the Meta, he should know (Wash must know), they must all know?

The flow of his thoughts isn’t straight, it’s interrupted and wrong and strange.  He has to rewind again, get Sarge away from what would have been an especially nasty broken leg, and that’s _really_  hard.

For the first time, he wonders if there’s going to be a him left when this is done.  He felt Epsilon coming apart inside himself and now his brain feels the same way, the pathways rearranging in ways they shouldn’t, sparks of half-thought forming, only enough to keep slicing through the ranks, only enough to know that he needs to protect his friends.  That’s the one overarching goal that he knows he has left.  

No.  That’s not true.  There’s one other one.

He wears grey armor, sometimes blue, but always with yellow stripes.  He has too many freckles and dark hair with a blond streak and a voice that always breaks at the most embarrassing times.  A deep-seated problem with cars. He’s a whole memory, a whole person.  And he never abandons his team.  He never abandons–

There’s a record button in the suit, and Tucker (yes, that’s him, he’s _Tucker_ , but that knowledge is fleeting and hard to hold onto) flips it on because he needs to say this now, before he can’t, before it all slips away.  “Wash, man,” he says, and he’s choking on lips that don’t feel right.  “When this is over.  Please, come get me.”

He doesn’t know if the message will make it through.  He doesn’t know if there will be enough left of him to find.  But his team trusts him, and he’s gonna get them through this, and then Washington–

–Washington will get him through whatever’s next.

Sometimes, you just gotta have faith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "how about tuckington for "please come get me."" Title from "Primary" by VNV Nation.


	2. Better Days to Come

If there’s one thing Agent Washington hates, it’s waiting.  He knows how to fight and bleed and even die, but he doesn’t know how to wait.  Doesn’t know how to deal with the sympathetic glances of the other soldiers.  It’s easier to pin his attention on Carolina, because she hates it just as much, paces back and forth, demands information that they don’t have, and it would be amusing if he didn’t want all the same things she does.

But it’s only a matter of time, and, eventually, waiting ends.  News comes back.  The Reds and the Blues are alive.  Washington’s men are alive, and the faith he had in them hasn’t been rocked, his trust not misplaced.  He shuts his eyes and breathes out and in, lets a clenched hand relax.

It’s the same hand that tightens again when he stares down at Tucker’s slack, unconscious face in the medical bay and listens to Dr. Grey’s cheerful and exceedingly useless prognosis of “coma, indeterminate brain damage from the Epsilon unit.”  It tightens again, harsh enough to draw blood from the palm of his hand when he hears the staticky, hurried recording that Tucker left for him, and he leaves the room to pace in the hallway.

Washington is no stranger to anger, and he’s certainly no stranger to overwhelming hatred for a dead man.  It’s always the same man, too.  Sometimes he wonders if he did something particularly horrible to Leonard Church in a past life.  It might explain a few things.

He splits his days between Tucker’s bedside and the training floor, at first, but soon the floor becomes too much of a confinement, and he runs instead, over the ravaged landscape of Chorus outside of the irradiated zones.  Running doesn’t mean he stops thinking, but it puts his thoughts into straight, simple lines.  Tucker hasn’t woken up yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t.  Don’t count the days, just collect stories to tell Tucker, to see if a friendly voice will help.  If Dr. Grey doesn’t know what might wake him up, treat it as a problem to be solved.  Just keep moving.  One foot forward, then the next.  Just keep moving.

The day Tucker opens his eyes, Wash has to close his for a moment, just to keep down the sudden wellspring of hope in his chest.  He knows better than anyone that hope that comes too early is more destructive than despair.  “Tucker,” he says gently.  “Can you hear me?”

Tucker’s brown eyes are clouded with confusion.  Washington has woken like this himself, broken shards of Epsilon crowding his mind, and it was a miracle that he could even name himself.  It might be too much to hope for two miracles.  Tucker’s head bobs in something that might be a nod.  “Do you know where you are?” Washington asks.  His hand clenches carefully.

“Not a clue,” Tucker answers, but at least his voice is clear.  “How much d’I have to drink last night?”

Wash leaves that one alone.  He ought to ask _do you know who you are_ , but the hope he tried to suppress surges up, and he blurts out, “Do you know who I am?”

Tucker groans and puts a hand to his head.  “Yeah, Wash,” he says.  “But what the fuck is _my_  name?”  Washington blinks, smiles slightly.  Well–it’s not the start he expected, and maybe it’s not the best start.  But it _is_  a start.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "I don't suppose there's any chance of a follow-up drabble to the "Please come get me" entry? Like. When Wash finds him. "
> 
> Title from "Sentinel" by VNV Nation.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Sentinel" by VNV Nation.


End file.
